1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for manufacturing an endoscope image pickup module to bond a transparent plate to a light receiving surface of an image pickup device via an adhesion layer made of UV curable resin, an endoscope image pickup module in which a transparent plate is bonded to a light receiving surface of an image pickup device via an adhesion layer made of UV curable resin, and an endoscope including the endoscope image pickup module.
2. Description of the Related Art
Endoscope image pickup modules are used, disposed at a distal end portion of an electronic endoscope. Reducing endoscope diameter is an important issue in achieving minimal invasiveness and image pickup modules are required to be compact.
First, a wafer level packaging (WLP) type image pickup module will be described briefly. The WLP type image pickup module is manufactured by cutting into individual pieces a junction wafer in which an image pickup wafer including a plurality of image pickup devices and a glass wafer are bonded together. For this reason, a whole light receiving surface on which a light receiving section of the image pickup device is formed is covered with cover glass. The light receiving section of the image pickup device is connected to a connection electrode on a back side facing the light receiving surface via through wiring.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2008-118568 discloses an image pickup module in which cover glass covering a light receiving section does not cover connection electrodes arrayed on a light receiving surface. In this image pickup module, no through wiring needs to be formed unlike a WLP type image pickup module.
In order to perform accurate positioning so as to cover the light receiving section and so as not to cover the connection electrode and bond the cover glass to the image pickup device, it is necessary to fix a jig to the cover glass first. When the cover glass is thin, it is not easy to fix the jig to a side face of the cover glass, and so a suction jig is used which holds the cover glass by suctioning a top surface of the cover glass.